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Room 101 - a random collection of advertising Quotes

This is the advertising quote collection that used to be on the front page and change to another random quote every time you revisited. I got bored with that setup. Besides, everybody is doing that these days. ;)

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"I will have clients rather than people who just give me orders" Francis Wayland Ayer-1848 1923

"How many times do I have to tell you guys? Media does not enter before strategy and idea!"Åsk Wäppling

"The same amount of space that exists over your head exists under your feet"Tia Wolfe

"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."unknown

"There is a great deal of advertising that is much better than the product. When that happens, all that the good advertising will do is put you out of business faster" Jerry Della Famina

"Young people are threatened . . . by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire" Pope John Paul II

"A magazine is simply a device to induce people to read advertising" James Collins 1907

"Buy me and you will overcome the anxieties I have just reminded you of"Michael Schudson

"Advertising is on its deathbed and it will not survive long, having contracted a fatal case of new technology."Roland T. Rust and Richard W. Oliver - The Death of Advertising

"I believe that superior creative work always has been, is, and always will be the hub of the wheel in any successful agency"Leo Burnett

"Big ideas are so hard to recognize, so fragile, so easy to kill. don't forget that, all of you who don't have them."John Elliott

"Advertising didn't mix sex up with our daily lives. The great Marketeer in the sky did that"Barry Brooks

"the incessant witless repetition of advertisers moron-fodder has become so much a part of life that if we are not careful, we forget to be insulted by it" The London Times (1886)

"Our job is to bring the dead facts to life" Bill Bernbachs

"the value of an ad is in inverse ratio to the number of times it has been used" Raymond Rubicam

"the list of sins committed by advertising is limited only by the creativity of its critics."Jerry Kirkpatrick

"You must make the product interesting, not just make the ad different. And that's what too many of the copywriters in the U.S. today don't yet understand." Rosser Reeves

"Ads become information when they're in context."Steve Larsen

"Statistics: A group of numbers looking for an argument ".sig

"You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take"unknown

"the best ad is a good product" Alan H. Meyer

"But I'm an advertising man, not a red herring!"Grant in North By Northwest.

"a principle is not a principle until it costs you something" Bill Bernbach

"Advertising is like an addiction - it can run and ruin your life" Jeremy Clarke

"In Sweden gay partnership is legal. Even our king is married to a queen"- Ad headline that SAS and Stockholm Information Service refused.

"Great designers seldom make great advertising men, because they get overcome by the beauty of the picture - and forget that merchandise must be sold" James Randolph Adams

"I have learned that it is far easier to write a speech about good advertising than it is to write a good ad"Leo Burnett

"Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things"David Ogilvy

"Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business"Leo Burnett

"this is a global business. You've got to be good everywhere."Roger Haupt

"Managing creatives is like hearding cats"John Gillard

"If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead. "Frank Gelett Burgess (1866-1951)

"the next time you're in a meeting, look around and identify the yes-butters, the not-knowers, and the why-notters. Why-notters move the world." Louise Pierson

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts -- for support rather than for illumination. "Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

"We are very much interested in their human values and we belive if these are kosher they can do eccellent creative work" Juan Mariano Mancebo about the type of creative he looks for.

"Well, Marcel Duchamp signed urinals and called it art. So I think if advertising isn't art it can be made art"Steve Dunn

"the best guy in Scandinavia is that chap Steinlager..Hehe..Well I call him Steinlager." Paul Arden talking about Stein Leikanger.

"Kennedy is the Art Director. I'm just the writer" Dan Weiden's response when asked to describe something with a picture.

"Advertising is the 'wonder' in Wonder Bread."Jef I. Richards (1995), advertising professor at The University of Texas at Austin

"I don't mind being called hooligans. Creatives are attracted to that kind of reputation."Nina DiSesa

"One picture may be worth ten thousand words, but some advertisers believe in using both in the same ad" Unknown

"A good ad which is not run never produces sales."Leo Burnett

"It's never the next brief, it's ALWAYS THIS brief ."Paul Arden

"It's different when you leave School and start to work in the real world. You're massive canvas has turned into the size of a post-it note... But You can still write *A n y t h i n g* on a post-it note.." Jeremy Clarke

"What other reason is there to work in design and advertising? There's money, power, greed and creativity.The creative approach is the only one. Anything else than the creative approach shouldn't be working"Neville Brody.

"Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time."Anonymous

"I think a great commercial can't be a press ad because television is totally different to press. If they can interchange then you have failed somewhere along the line."John Hegarty discussing the 'what does the guy who drives the snowplow drive to the snowplow with'-commercial.

"then there's the Pets.com sock puppet. Cute? Original? Puh-leeeze. It's Jerry Della Feminas Fingerman, in hosiery. This work--indeed, the vast majority of dot-com advertising--is so utterly banal it should cause any half-sane human to question the very value of the advertising enterprise. "Randall Rothenberg

"It's very fascinating, it's very addictive, and it's incredibly challenging. You're never satisfied. It's kind of like advertising. You're never satisfied"Jay Chiat about playing golf.

"Advertising Executive: yesir, nosir, ulcer!"Anonymous

"Because I'm in advertising, not electricity!"Jerry Della Feminas response to the question: How did you manage to blow up the hairdryer?

"Hollywood has its Oscars. Television has its Emmys. Broadway has its Tonys. And advertising has its Clios. And its Andys, Addys, Effies and Obies. And 117 other assorted awards. And those are just the big ones."Joanne Lipman

"No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft."H.G. Wells

"there is more money wasted in advertising by underspending than by overspending. Years ago someone said that underspending in advertising is like buying a ticket halfway to Europe. You've spent your money but you never get there."Morris Hite

"there is no such thing as soft sell and hard sell. There is only smart sell and stupid sell"Charles Browder

"I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one"Leo Burnett

"I honestly believe that advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. " Jerry Della Famina

"Creativity is finding a client that allows you to be as good as you can be. "Tom McElligot

"I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second. "Steven Wright

"Congratulate me, Joe! I just sold the business to the Resor boys. They don't know it, but the advertising agency buisness has seen it's best days!" Mr. Thompson from J. Walter Thompson 1916

"I'm just a guy who's trying to do a job, and the fact that this industry takes itself so seriously and that it treats the people who work in it as celebrities is pretty ridiculous."Steve Rabosky

"Chaos isn't necessarily bad and order isn't necessaraly good. Corporate identity is about order. Many problems simply are not design problems"Dugald Stermer

"the artistic temprament is a disease that afflicts amateurs" Chapter 16, Heretics, 1905

"the Hell I will, I'll give them away" When Leo Burnett opened his agency during the depression, his friends sneered and said that he'd be selling apples on the streetcorners in six months

"don't fool around with the folks at the bottom. They can't help you. Head for the top guy. You can't go wrong and you can't do better." Jane Trahey

"Getchell invented those microphotographs that illustrate tiny things going on with beard hair etc for Colgate Rapid Shave, yet he refused to put a coupon in a Palmolive ad and quit. That was in 1925, nothing has changed. Clients get innovation and nag about coupons." Åsk Wäppling

"I'm in excellent health and I've got impact you haven't felt yet. So don't relax" Mary Wells when she became the youngest member of the Copywriters Hall of Fame in 1969

"It's the 'National Enquirer' for the ad people"Joe Sedelmaier about Adweek.

"If somebody has done it before, that is enough reason to knock an idea off the table"Steve Henry

"No agency is better than its account executives."Morris Hite

" Mass demand has been created almost entirely through the development of advertising. "Calvin Coolidge

"To swear off making mistake is very easy. All you have to do is swear off having ideas. "Leo Burnett

"The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor."David Ogilvy

"Advertising - a judicious mixture of flattery and threats"Northrop Frye

"Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance"Marshall McLuhan

"Advertising is selling Twinkies to adults."Donald R. Vance

"Most agencies run scared, most of the time. . . .Frightened people are powerless to produce good advertising. . . . If I were aclient, I would do everything in my power to emancipate my agencies from fear, even to the extent of giving them long-term contracts.
"David Ogilvy

"If there are signs that Americans bow to the gods of advertising, there are equally indications that people find the gods ridiculous. It is part of the popular culture that advertisements are silly."Michael Schudson

"What helps people, helps business."Leo Burnett

"When you try to formalize or socialize creative activity, the only sure result is commercial constipation, the good ideas are all hammered out in agony by individuals, not spewed out by groups."Charles Browder

"the modern Little Red Riding Hood, reared on singing commercials, has no objection to being eaten by the wolf."Marshall McLuhan

"the secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships"Leo Burnett

"Advertising is a symbol-manipulating occupation"S. I. Hayakawa

"Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read"David Ogilvy

"Give people a taste of Old Crow, and tell them it's Old Crow. Then give them another taste of Old Crow, but tell them it's Jack Daniel's. Ask them which they prefer. They'll think the two drinks are quite different. They are tasting images "David Ogilvy

"It is our job to make women unhappy with what they have"B. Earl Puckett

"When executing advertising, it's best to think of yourself as an uninvited guest in the living room of a prospect who has the magical power to make you disappear instantly"John O 'toole

"I've never found a client's business problem that could be solved solely through advertising."Lee Clow

"Advertising degrades the people it appeals to; it deprives them of their will to choose. "C. P. Snow

"One Ad is worth more to a paper than forty Editorials "Will Rogers

"time spent in the advertising business seems to create a permanent deformity like the Chinese habit of foot-binding. "Dean Acheson

"Asked about the power of advertising in research surveys, most agree that it works, but not on them."Eric Clark

"If advertising had a little more respect for the public, the public would have a lot more respect for advertising"James Randolph Adams

"Advertisers in general bear a large part of the responsibility for the deep feelings of inadequacy that drive women to psychiatrists, pills, or the bottle."Marya Mannes

"Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising."John Lahr

"Strategy and timing are the Himalayas of marketing. Everything else is the Catskills."Al Ries and Jack Trout

"History will see advertising as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that."Malcolm Muggeridge

"I can not think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil."Arnold Toynbee

"Young people are threatened . . . by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire.
"Pope John Paul II

"Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things."David Ogilvy

"Advertising in the final analysis should be news. If it is not news it is worthless."Adolph S. Ochs

"If commerce is the engine of our economy, then advertising is the spark. Responsible advertisers are the drivers who keep us on the right track, leading to a richer, more benevolent society.
"Brian Philcox

"the vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference."Fred Allen Comedian

"the work of an advertising agency is warmly and immediately human. It deals with human needs, wants, dreams and hopes. Its 'product' cannot be turned out on an assembly line."Leo Burnett

"Scottish humour is on the rise."Johan Kramer

"Even prostitutes need advertising. "Anonymous.

"Advertising is what you do when you can't go see somebody. That's all it is."Fairfax Cone

"the art of publicity is a black art."Learned Hand

"Unless a product becomes outmoded, a great campaign will not wear itself out."Rosser Reeves

"two common conceptions with regard to advertising which are held by a considerable number of people are that enormously large sums of money are expended for it, and that much of this expenditure is an economic waste. "Daniel Starch

"the philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men - the man he is and the man he wants to be."William Feather

"the codfish lays ten thousand eggs,the homely hen lays one.The codfish never cackles to tell you when she's done.And so we scorn the codfish, while the humble hen we prize.Which only goes to show you-it pays to advertise!"anonymous

"You must stir it and stump it, And blow your own trumpet,Or trust me, you haven't a chance!"W. S. Gilbert

"Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero "F. Scott Fitzgerald

"You can tell the ideals of a nation by its
advertisements."Norman Douglas

"the business that considers itself immune to the necessity
for advertising sooner or later finds itself immune to business."Derby Brown

"If everything on television is, without exception, part of a
low-calorie (or even no-calorie) diet, then what good is it complaining about the adverts?
By their worthlessness, they at least help to make the programmes around them seem of a higher level.
"Jean Baudrillard

" I see The Gap ads as being a great example of how branding has changed. Those Gap campaigns are pop culture. They've been incredibly powerful. They have had the kind of effect on culture that a hit band has. Just look at The Gap's Khaki swing ads, which were music videos. They had this tremendous impact on the industry — suddenly everything started looking like Gap ads and it became difficult to know who was co-opting whom and who was creating culture."Naomi Klein

"there is a world, in a far-flung corner of our galaxy, where women have no nipples and motor cars, though legally capable of 70 mph never trundle a smidgen over thirty. A world where alcohol never makes people drunk and is only ever consumed in moderation by responsible adults who appear to be at least 25 years old! "Trevor Beattie on censored advertising.

"Ideas work on their own agenda."Wes Commando

"We give this practice two thumbs down!"Richard Blumenthal, Attorney General , on the non-existant David Manning critic case

"Advertising promotes that divine discontent which makes people strive to improve their economic status.
"Ralph Butler

"Advertising has annihilated the power of the most powerful
adjectives."Paul Valéry

"When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much
about having close relationships."Andy Warhol

"Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century."Marshall McLuhan

"Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century."Marshall McLuhan

"Advertising is the lubricant for the free-enterprise system."Leo-Arthur Kelmenson

"Advertising is salesmanship mass produced. No one would bother to use advertising if he could talk to all his
prospects face-to-face. But he can't. "Morris Hite

"The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. "Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Every time a man puts a new idea across, he faces a dozen men who thought of it before he did. But they only thought of it. "Oren Arnold

"The rewards in business go to the man who does something with an idea."William Benton

"The more an idea is developed, the more concise
becomes its expression; the more a tree is pruned, the better is the fruit.
"Alfred Bougeart

"Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless."Sinclair Lewis

"It used to be that people needed products to survive. Now products need people to survive."Nicholas Johnson

"Advertisements contain the only truths
to be relied on in a newspaper."Thomas Jefferson

"Bad word of mouth spreads faster than good advertising."unknown

"Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the
money. "Willian J Cameron

"Technological change is like an axe in the hands of a
pathological criminal."Albert Einstein

"We must treat ideas somewhat as though they
were baby fish. Throw thousands out into the
waters. Only a handful will survive but that is
plenty."Anne Heywood

"Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another
mind than in the one where they sprang up."Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Advertising has done more to cause the social unrest of the 20th century than any other single factor."Clare Boothe
Luce

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
"Elbert Hubbard

"An idea can turn dust into
magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.
"Breffni Baggot

"I don't think the advertisers have any real idea of their power not only to reflect but to mold society."Marya Mannes

"To get your ideas across, use small words, big ideas and
short sentences."John Henry Pattersen

"Advertising is the rattling of
a stick inside a swill bucket."George Orwell

"Of all creative businesses, advertising isn't. "Åsk Wäppling

"Today is really really cold in this advertising climate."unknown

"Congress seems to believe that 'Children are our future' is a phrase coined by tobacco advertisers,'"Jef I. Richards

"Whether you believe you can,
or whether you believe you can't,
you're absolutely right. "Henry Ford

"Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising."Mark Twain

"Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted."John Kenneth Galbraith

"Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better "George Santayana

"What the mass media offer is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish."W. H. Auden

"we've got to know what we've got a choice of. This is the function of advertising."Tom Dillon

"The whole creative process is stupid. It's like washing a pig. It's messy, it has no rules, no clear beginning, middle, or end; it's kind of a pain in the ass, and when you're done, you're not sure if the big is clean or even why you were washing a pig in the first place."Luke Sullivan

"Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You
cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to
humanity is exactly minus zero. "F. Scott Fitzgerald

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

"- Thomas Jefferson speaking about copyright

"I'm tired of advertising! I'm looking for new solutions that make people laugh and amuse. Italian creativity is too narrow, it still hasn't overcome the dichotomy limits between heaven and hell."Renzo Rosso, founder of Diesel

"The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague.
"Bill Cosby

"I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean the advertisement. It is far easier to write ten passably effective Sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical buying public.
"Aldous Huxley

"No agency is better than its account executives. "Morris Hite

"Advertising is legalized lying."H. G. Wells

"Ads are carefully designed by the Madison Avenue frog-men of-the-mind for semiconscious exposure."Marshall McLuhan

"Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance."Marshall McLuhan

"Advertising is a non-moral force, like electricity, which not only illuminates but electrocutes. Its worth to civilization depends upon how it is used."

J. Walter Thompson

"If we define pornography as any message from any communication medium that is intended to arouse sexual excitement, then it is clear that most advertisements are covertly pornographic."Philip Slater

"Let's gear our advertising to sell goods, but let's recognize also that advertising has a broad social responsibility."

Leo Burnett

""To explain responsibility to advertising men is like trying to convince an eight-year-old that sexual intercourse is more fun than a chocolate ice cream cone."Howard Luck Gossage

"Advertisers, not governments, are the primary censors of media content in the United States today." C. Edwin Baker, Advertising and a Democratic Press, 1994

"Advertising is 'an evil service'."

Aneurin Bevan, quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the World of Advertising, 1988

"Advertising is much less powerful than advertisers and critics of advertising claim, and advertising agencies are stabbing in the dark much more than they are practicing precision microsurgery on the public consciousness."

Michael Schudson, Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society, 1984

"In essence, the motivation of the attacks on advertising is hostility toward capitalism and egoism."

"I passionately hate the idea of being "with it", I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time."Orson Welles

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."Lily Tomlin

"There is a 48% higher risk for traffic accidents on roads where there are advertising billboards present."Danish Transport research

"The business community wants remarkable advertising, but turns a cold
shoulder to the kind of people who can produce it. That is why most
advertisements are so infernally dull.... our business needs massive
transfusions of talent. And talent, I believe, is most likely to be found
among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels."David Ogilvy

"Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested
with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera."David Ogilvy

"I get good advice from the advertising world"Koka Kola lyrics, The Clash

"They establish contact with the subconscious of the consumer below the word level. They do this with visual symbols instead of words ... They communicate faster. They are more direct. There is no work, no mental effort. Their sole purpose is to create images and moods."Rosser Reeves on brands, Reality in Advertising, 1961

"The world has progressed to the point where it's most powerful force is public opinion. And I believe that in this world it is not the great book or epic play, as once was the case, that will shape that opinion, but those who understand mass media and the techniques of mass persuasion...We must not just believe in what we sell. We must sell what we believe in. And we must pour a vast energy into those causes."Bill Bernbach

"People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull ... When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire.
"David Ogilvy

"Advertising is a ten billion dollar a year misunderstanding with the public."Chester L. Posey, Senior V.P. & CD, McCann Erickson

"Focus group research has created a composite No-Man who resembles no-one anyone has ever met."Cathy Lewis